The State of the Rock Chick: Individual Style or Manufactured Fashion?

As usual, this year’s Coachella lineup includes a handful of female artists—like Haim, Lorde, and Lana Del Rey—who look as good as they sound. But none has yet mastered the easy cool embodied by rock’s founding females. Raising a metaphoric middle finger to overly made-up, costumey artists, women like Debbie Harry, Patti Smith, and Chrissie Hynde have more in common with Led Zeppelin than, say, Lesley Gore. And unlike Miley Cyrus or Lady Gaga, these influential women got (and get) a reaction without even a hint of calculation.

“All of these people were not interested in conventional feminine roles, and particularly conventional feminine roles as they’re presented in the media,” says the eminent rock critic Greil Marcus, author of the upcoming The History of Rock ’N’ Roll in Ten Songs. “It’s not to shock, it’s not to brand an image in people’s brains—it’s take it or leave it, and the fun of knowing that, because you do your work in public, other people’s eyes are always on you, so you play with that.”

Each of these women created—effortlessly, it seemed—looks that became inextricably linked with their music. Sex appeal is key—even for Patti Smith or Chrissie Hynde in men’s wear—but the real thrust is self-assured power, often expressed in visuals borrowed from male rock stars. “A lot of the male looks are so much stronger than the female looks because it’s not so much about selling your sexuality, or it sells sexuality in a different way, where it’s tougher,” says Christian Joy, who has created stage wear for Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs for the last 12 years and cites David Bowie as a key influence for her work. “To me, that’s way sexier than wearing some super high-cut pair of shorts, because you’re owning it. What comes across is the strength that the performer possesses.”

Many of these artists dressed themselves, free from any temptation to link up with designer houses or retail outlets. (Back then, luxury designers and rock singers were on opposite sides of a more or less uncrossable cultural divide.) Today, by contrast, even offbeat artists like Lana Del Rey and Florence Welch sign deals with H&M and Gucci, respectively, and who can forget Lily Allen sitting in the front row at the Paris fashion shows?

And as one gets closer to the Top 40, the idea of dressing oneself becomes more and more unthinkable. “Especially in the pop world, the big names have gotten too dependent on their stylists and maybe not listening to their own innate style,” says Dee Anderson, a stylist who has worked with Chrissie Hynde as well as male artists in bands like Green Day, Imagine Dragons, and Jimmy Eat World. “When you look at someone like Patti Smith or Debbie Harry, there’s that authenticity,” she adds. “I think that the most important thing is to dress for yourself and not for the way other people think you should dress.”